Tuesday, June 10, 2014

This is the third in a series
of blogs that I am writing in response to a request from Bob Clary, Webucator’s
community manager. The series concerns professional and business competencies
that recent grads need. The competencies that I am covering are ethics, job
search, interpersonal skills, and writing. This blog concerns interpersonal
skills and communication.

Whetten and Cameron point out (p. 285) that junior managers
who are insensitive, abrasive, intimidating, cold, aloof, arrogant, or
untrustworthy frequently find that their careers have been derailed. Learning how to deal with
people is essential to getting ahead and moving up in any organization, whether
it is in industry, government, academia, the military, or healthcare.

Empathic Listening

Dale Carnegie gives simple, sound advice: Don’t criticize,
condemn, or complain. Give honest appreciation. Be honestly interested in
others. Remember others’ names. Smile. Be a good listener. In short, getting
others to trust and like you depends on your communication skill as well as
your dependability, hard work, and efficiency.

Steven Covey also emphasizes the importance of what he calls
“empathic listening.” In Chapter 5 of Seven
Habits, “Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood,” Covey emphasizes
the importance of putting oneself in the shoes of the person with whom one
communicates. Covey writes (p. 240): “When I say empathic listening, I
mean listening with intent to understand.”
In other words, we should care about those with whom we work.

Certainly,
building personal relationships or even friendships with our coworkers is a
desirable strategy. Covey writes of an
emotional bank account to which we make deposits when we make others feel good,
and from which we make withdrawals when we ask for favors or forgiveness. Covey shows that empathic listening can be
especially effective with respect to integrative or win-win negotiation whereby
we attempt to expand the pie rather than to divide it.

There is no question that empathic listening and integrative
negotiation are effective much of the time.
They are most valuable in the context of long-term relationships that
are important to us. The more that we
can use emotional intelligence to build trust, respect, and understanding
through listening, the better our long-term relationships will be.

Contingency Theory of Interpersonal Tactics

Not all relationships in business are long-term,
though. We frequently need to interact
with customers, suppliers, consultants, or associates whom we will meet only
once or a few times. Also, we may have colleagues
with whom it is difficult to be empathic.
Empathy is a crucial strategy, but it is high in cost. It is important to be empathic with those who
are most important to us, especially our boss, higher ups with whom we work, and
employees and colleagues with whom we frequently interact. We need to decide when the empathic strategy works best and
when the alternative, managed communication, works best. We manage our
communication when we provide responses and information that are appropriate to
the situation but may not reflect our natural feelings.

Management experts call a strategy or tactic that depends on the
circumstances a contingency theory.
Contingency theories suggest that an appropriate response depends on
circumstances, task requirements, personalities, and organizational characteristics. Organizational culture, for example, may dictate that we
always seem smart or that we never seem smart.
Whether we are smart or not is less important than conforming to the
requirements of the organizational culture, one way or the other. Other organizational factors such as the organization's tasks and structure also modify how we communicate.

Such organizational demands may pose adjustment difficulties for
recent graduates. Most educational institutions emphasize intellectual
achievement and ignore interpersonal flexibility. The idea of appearing in ways other than high
achieving is alien to most students' education. The high-achieving style fits some but not
all organizations. Much as a yogi can
bend his or her body in unusual ways, so can an individual adept at interpersonal
skills bend his behavior patterns to fit organizational demands.

If an individual works for a firm for a long time, he or she is likely to acclimate to and adopt the organizational culture as part of their personality. At first, though, it
is necessary to manage responses so that they fit.

The same is true in dealing with a boss. We need to understand
our boss’s aims. Our goals need to coincide with broader departmental and
organizational ones. Moreover, it is useful
to mirror. Mirroring means that
we adopt characteristics of our boss or an important client so that we seem to have
much in common with them. The characteristics can include interests,
appearance, communication style, preference for entertainment, and place of
residence. I once worked for a bank in which all of the higher ups lived in
Summit, New Jersey. When an employee was
on the fast track, one of the first things that he did was buy a house in
Summit.

I once had a student who worked at a major investment bank.
He told me that when he had first been hired, he had had trouble fitting in
because he had never been interested in sports before, but most of his fellow
traders spoke chiefly about sports. He
realized that in order to fit in he would need to follow sports, so he bought subscriptions
to Sporting
Newsand Sports Illustrated.After reading
these publications religiously, he developed an interest in
sports. He found himself fitting in.

A key to the contingency approach to interpersonal skills,
then, is deciding when to be empathic and when to adopt a
calculated response. It is important to
understand that not everyone in an organization is trustworthy. For instance, Paul Babiak and Robert Hare’s
book Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to
Workoutlines the characteristics of workplace psychopaths. As I point out in Cornell
HR Review(and here), between three and six percent of
corporate employees may be responsible for the majority of ethical breaches in
corporations. Workplace psychopaths tend
to be “manipulative, glib and grandiose."

Although white collar psychopaths are a small proportion of
the population, corporate employees are forced to take on a defensive behavior
pattern, creating a Gresham’s Law of psychopathy. In monetary history, Gresham’s Law is
the principle that when gold coins were undervalued relative to silver coins,
people saved the gold coins and only used the silver coins. Gresham’s Law is that “bad money drives out good.”
Lack of trust drives out trust in many corporations. Under
such circumstances, which are common, it is foolish to be overly empathic. One must assess those with whom one deals. If you have seen the HBO
series Game of Thrones, you know what
I am talking about.

The need for a contingency theory comes up in many interpersonal
contexts. In negotiating it may not be possible to share information with a
bargaining partner who prefers to be distributive (emphasizing splitting up the
pie to their advantage) rather than integrative (expanding the pie). In motivating others it may not be possible to
use Theory Y or trusting leadership because employees may have values that
cause them to take advantage of trust; in such circumstances Theory X or controlling leadership is necessary.

Managed Approaches

In developing a managed approach to communication, Whetten
and Cameron emphasize the importance of understanding the sensitive lines of
others. The sensitive line is the point
at which one’s self-concept is threatened.
If you cross someone’s sensitive line, they are likely to become
defensive or disconfirmed. Defensiveness
means one is inclined to protect oneself by attacking the other party. Disconfirmation
occurs when one of the parties feels ignored or insignificant. Whetten and
Cameron advocate the use of supportive
communication tactics. Supportive communication tactics reduce the likelihood of causing defensiveness or disconfirmation in others.

The supportive communication tactics include being honest, avoiding value
judgments, focusing on factual discussion, and validating
others by treating them as equals and by being flexible in response to their opinions. When a conflict occurs,
the discussion should focus on facts and the behavior rather than the person. People should take responsibility (or own)
their communication, and they should relate what they say to what the other
person says.

Whetten and Cameron also emphasize supportive listening.
They describe four listening responses: advising, deflecting, probing, and
reflecting. These can also be managed to influence the other person's feelings. The point of listening responses is that we can modulate them to encourage or discourage the other party from expressing themselves. Supportive communication means encouraging the other party.

In advising the listener
responds by giving advice. In deflecting the listener responds by changing the
subject and focusing on their own experiences: “If you think what your boss did
is bad, take a look at what my boss did.” In probing the listener asks
questions. In reflecting the listener responds by acknowledging that he or she
is listening. Reflective responses include summarizing and restating what the other person is saying. It involves giving back the message in different words.

The reflecting and probing responses are the most supportive
and least likely to cause defensiveness or disconfirmation. The advising and deflecting responses are the
most intrusive and most likely to do so.

Conclusion

The ultimate key to developing interpersonal skills is
practice. Certainly, empathy is
important to developing sound, long-term relationships, but the appropriate response is contingent on factors like personality, ethics, organizational culture, organizational structure, and task. Good business people need to develop
alternative tactics that are appropriate to different settings, personalities,
tasks, and organizations and to choose the most appropriate ones.

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Mitchell Langbert

About Me

I have researched and written about employee benefit issues and in my previous life was a corporate benefits administrator. I am currently associate professor of business at Brooklyn College. I hold a Ph.D. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business, an MBA from UCLA and an AB from Sarah Lawrence College. I am working on a project involving public policy. I blog on academic and political topics.